Using Strengths to heal from loss.
It all begins with an idea.
Healing the Wobbly Wheel: How My CliftonStrengths Helped Me Mend a Missing-Mum Childhood
I was nine when Mum’s car disappeared down the gravel road for the last time. The hub of our family wheel snapped. Protection, nurture, guidance, and belonging—the four spokes that should have held me steady—suddenly bore too much weight. For decades the ache lived quietly inside me. Then, in my thirties, I became a mother myself and realised the wheel was still wobbling. Healing didn’t arrive in one dramatic moment. It arrived through grace—and through the very strengths God had wired into me.
My Command and Activator strengths refused to let me stay stuck. Instead of waiting for the pain to fade, I picked up the tools I now share in Missing Mum, Finding Grace: recognise the possibility, name the hurt, uncover the self-sabotage, envision a stronger future, and release what no longer served me. I stopped rehearsing old abandonment stories and started building new ones.
Individualization taught me that every missing-mum story is unique. I stopped comparing my ache to others’ and began honouring the particular shape of my own wound. Significance reminded me that my pain had purpose; it wasn’t just something to survive but something to steward. So I wrote the book—not for applause, but because my story could matter to someone else.
Communication became my lifeline. Writing the book, coaching other women, and speaking the words “I grew up with a missing mum” out loud loosened the shame that had silenced me for years. And through every step, God’s grace—made real by the Holy Spirit, did what no human strength could: He became the perfect hub I never had.
Today the wheel still carries a few scars, but it rolls true. I am the mother I once longed for, and I am held by the One who never leaves. Grace didn’t erase the ache. It taught me how to ride with it—stronger, freer, and finally home.